


Crowned Cliche

by Werepirechick



Category: 3Below (Tales of Arcadia), Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons), Trollhunters - Daniel Kraus & Guillermo del Toro
Genre: Canon Compliant, Curse Breaking, Fairy Tale Curses, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Mutual Pining, Reunite The Trollhunting Trio 2k19, Teenage Dorks, The Author Regrets Nothing, also toby really needs some love, don't put on strange magical crowns kiddos, everyone here has collectively two brain cells, i want fun things! canon gave me lots of stuff but not the things i wanted!, magical transformations, mostly goofs and jokes, the golden trio deserves love, to a point anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-07-28 11:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20063584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werepirechick/pseuds/Werepirechick
Summary: Something dull prods Toby’s nose. He scrunches his eyes shut tight and waves blindly at whatever’s touching him. The following shrieks jolt him out of the nap he didn’t remember taking.Toby sits up sharply, rising up and up and- Krel and Steve and Arrrgh are a short distance away, down on the ground. Toby blinks, confused; he’s not holding his hammer, why is he so high up?“Toby? Toby, hey, dude!” Steve is shouting, sounding nervous. “Are you, uh, you in there, buddy? We’re friends, right? You don’t feel like chowing down on your old pal Palchuk.”“What? What the fuck, why would I-” Toby’s mouth snaps shut, his voice dying as he feels it come outwrong, louder and bigger and just- his but not his.OrThe one where Toby is cursed fairy tale style and turns into a dragon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i had a hankering for the OG trio, but also goofy stuff, but also canon continuation. so i made this!
> 
> solar cycle should be a bigger ship in this fandom, and i know exactly why it isn't :///

Even with all the zombie Gum-Gum soldiers cleared out- and holy _hell_ that’d been an unpleasant experience- the ruins of Trollmarket are still creepy as all get out to walk around in.

The absurdity of their group helps, though. Toby is a _member_ of their little party and he can’t take them seriously. Like, they’re kind of kickass, but also kind of really ridiculous.

Toby himself is clanking around in pieces of armor made from a moped (and only half of the set, at that. It’s heavy, okay? He mostly needs to protect his squishy insides anyway). Arrrgh is chaperoning them all, and yeah, duh a troll would be in Trollmarket. But then jump over to Krel, a literal _alien_, walking around like a living glowstick, and Steve, who’s just some normal guy, dressed head to toe in black in the middle of July’s heatwave, toting a bat around like he’s Harrington instead of Palchuk, and they’re just. Honestly ridiculous.

The fact that they’re all from separate ‘teams’, in a sense, lends to the mild dysfunctionality of their party. An alien prince, a small-town bully, a troll and a backup Trollhunter walk into a desolate underground market. They’re a bad joke with a worse punchline, even if they treat that with easy humor.

“How did you get indoor plumbing down here? None of these pipes make any sense,” Krel mumbles, only half asking Arrrgh as he fusses with his scanner-thing. When Arrrgh shrugs and replies, “Ask Blinky,” Krel just absently nods and wanders off in a new direction.

“Hey, nerdling, how much longer is this gonna take?” Steve says belligerently, swinging his bat in an arc. “I got better things to do than follow you guys around in a musty old cave.”

Toby snorts. “You were complaining about having nothing to do without Aja and Eli around, literally just last night.”

“Well- that was yesterday! I got stuff to do today!”

“Like what?”

“You, uh, you know, just- hey, _shut up,_ it’s none of your business what I do with my time, Dumbzalski.”

At the long-time derogatory nickname, Toby rolls his eyes. It’s been a long time since he could be intimidated by Steve’s bluster; facing down the end of the world (_twice_) has put Steve’s previous bullying pretty far down the list of things that scare Toby. Besides, Steve’s different since he and Eli became weird almost-glued-at-the-hip friends, and dating Aja helped a lot, too. He’s not so bad. Just terrible at socializing.

Thinking about Steve’s friends makes Toby think of his own, who’d similarly encouraged changes in him. Toby squashes the pang of loneliness, missing his best friends in the whole world, and picks up the pace to follow Krel.

“You know the places Blinky told us had like, useful stuff is back that way, right?”

“Those are barely showing up on the scans,” Krel dismisses, intent on his mishmash Earth-Akiridion tech, “there are much brighter ones in this direction.”

Toby looks ahead of them, and grimaces. It’s the Heroes Forge, which houses all the ghosts of past Trollhunters. “Uh, dunno about the ethics of powering your teleporter with dead people, dude.”

“What? Seklos and Gaylen, no not dead people.” Krel taps the beacons on his screen that they’re following. “I made this to look for magical energies, not _dead people._ What good would a rotten organic be to me anyway?”

Toby squints at him. “D’you guys not have ghosts back home?”

“What is a ‘ghosts’.”

“It’s-”

“Never mind, tell me later- it’s locked on!”

Krel takes off running, using his great, long legs to pull ahead. Steve yelps about not being left behind and runs after, athlete’s build giving him advantage. Toby looks down at his short little legs with metal boots on, and sighs loudly. Sometimes, he really misses the Shadow Staff.

Before he can start jogging after the others, a gentle but strong hand picks him up like he weighs as much as air. Toby says, “Thanks, wingman,” as Arrrgh places him on his broad shoulders. His giant friend hums, deep in his wide chest, and starts an easy lope forward.

When they catch up, Krel and Steve are standing at the edge of the Forge. Toby’s mood sours as he realizes what comes next.

“Do we _really_ have to go down into the spooky death canyon again?” Toby questions, peeking over the lip of the cliff. He sees the inky blackness below and shivers. It’s been a long time since it happened, but there’s moments where he thinks about Jim’s cage plummeting down into those depths. Toby had hoped against hope, but a part of him was stricken with terror and grief that he’d just seen his best friend _executed._

But then Jim climbed back out of the Deep, and it’d turned out alright in the end. But Jim never told Toby, or anyone else, what he’d seen down there. Toby never had the heart to press him, either; he’d just been grateful to have him back.

Krel and Aja got rid of the defensive magic of the Deep, at least? Toby definitely hadn’t wanted to face his worst fears. (But then he’d ended up here, alone, even with their big victory…)

“Of course. There is a number of very powerful energies down there,” Krel says, popping out his hoverboard and stepping onto it. “Your Can-of-jars must have hidden more than just Gaylen’s core in his vault. Which means we should retrieve them; in case they were intended for me to find.”

“And the vault’s down there?” Steve squeaks, paling as he looks over the edge.

“Sure is,” Toby replies, jokingly smacking Steve’s back and making him flinch away from the cliff, choking on a scream. Steve’s face flushes red and he shoves Toby back, who laughs.

“Hmmm… be careful,” Arrrgh scolds lightly, using one arm to nudge both of them back, closer to him. “Bad fall.”

Toby pats his friend’s bicep, smiling. “I know, buddy, thanks.” As he turns his attention back to Krel and Steve, Toby is just in time to witness Steve being swept off his feet- literally- and flown screaming off the cliff with Krel’s four arms wrapped around him. Toby watches them both disappear into the Deep, sighing again.

“You ready for this, wingman?”

“Mmmghh… don’t like Deep.” Arrrgh puts a hand down on the cliff’s edge, which crumbles a little and lets loose a few tiny pebbles, bouncing down the steep drop. “Don’t like _cliff.”_

“Me neither, dude. Me neither.” Toby extends his Warhammer, the firelight flaring to brighten the dim around them. “But c’mon, this is our turf. We can’t let those guys go running off unsupervised.”

-/-

“Alright, if you find anything that looks like a piece of Akiridion technology, don’t touch it until I-”

A crash on the other side of the room interrupts Krel. “Oops,” Steve says, near a pile of formerly floating stones. A couple of metal pieces lie with them, probably whatever they’d been showcasing.

Toby laughs as Krel grumbles, _“-blonde oaf, ugh, Aja should’ve taken this one instead,”_ as he starts scanning the rest of the vault. If Krel hadn’t wanted Steve to touch stuff he shouldn’t, he should have held onto him with one of those four hands.

Toby looks around at the vault, taking in details he’d missed during his first visit. Kind of hard to appreciate architecture when you’re fighting for your life, on behalf of the _universe._ Most of it is typical troll design, with only small hints of extraterrestrial touches; simple bones to the place, letting its size and contents inspire grandeur. Now that they’ve got time to look around, Toby sees other items have been stored here.

Well, it makes sense. If you have a giant, heavily guarded vault, it’s a good idea to utilize it for more than one thing. Shame it’s got crappy ventilation; Toby concedes defeat and takes off his helmet, gloves, and bracers. The climb down was more difficult the second time around, given Arrrgh isn’t exactly the easiest passenger to transport, so now he’s all sweaty, ugh.

Toby keeps his chest plate and boots, though, as he glances around for a corner of the room unoccupied. Steve is trying to fix whatever he knocked over- he lifts a stone, hopeful, only for it to fall out of the air immediately- and Krel is examining a rack of what might be enchanted weapons. Arrrgh is quietly munching on the snacks Toby brought, taking a break from his chaperoning duties.

Toby picks the corner opposite of everyone else, heading towards an interesting array of smaller circulating stones. The accessories he spots floating among them aren’t as exciting as he’d hoped, but hey, still cool. Ornate necklaces made for someone far bigger than him, rings the size of human bracelets, intricately crafted horn ornaments- none of it screams ‘highly valuable’ by troll standards, given weapons and offensive buffs are favored over pretty trinkets. None of them even have spikes or anything.

Toby is about to keep moving along, but something on the end of the row catches his eye. He feels a smile stretch across his face, walking towards the gold crown spinning a few feet above his eye level. It’s really nice, with over a dozen blue and red gems set into it and graceful points all around. It’s smaller than most troll-made things tend to be, bordering delicate, but Toby supposes it could’ve been for someone of the less physically imposing races.

Flicking his hammer out, Toby eases the gravity on his body and pushes off the ground to grab it.

“Hey, Krel! Who’s king in waiting now?”

At Toby’s approach, Krel looks away from his scanning and cataloguing or whatever he’s doing. He lets out a soft laugh and his expression scrunches into amused confusion. “Is that an earth king’s crown?”

“Hell yeah. Maybe. I dunno, could be a queen’s, too?” Toby pushes the slightly too-big crown up from his brow. “It’s super sick though, isn’t it?”

“It… does not appear ill?”

“Human slang, dude. It’s neat, right?”

Steve, having abandoned his fruitless cleanup attempts, joins them with keen eyes fixed on Toby. “All I found was junk, lemme see that crown, Toby. I _am_ dating a queen, after all.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be king even if you married her, dumbass,” Toby snips, laughing at Steve’s stumbling words over how marriage isn’t even a question right now, they’re not even adults, and they don’t have to unless Aja, you know, wants to, it’s her choice really-

Toby tunes him out with practiced ease, moving over to the weapons Krel was investigating. He admires himself in the wide blade of a faintly vibrating broadsword (which they’re all wisely not touching), enjoying the fantasy of being a prince or something. Not that he really wants to, after that experience being a god-king went so sour. The fantasy is more along the lines of him imagining him and his friends had had time to join another school play. One of the Shakespeare plays with a king. If it hadn’t been for Trollhunting taking over their lives, maybe Toby would’ve gotten a chance to be on stage with Jim and Claire.

A wistful thought, one that slips his mind as Toby ducks Steve’s grabbing hands.

“Gimme a turn already, dude!”

“Screw off, it’s finders’ keepers!”

“It’s _my_ vault,” Krel corrects haughtily, watching them scuffle with a bored stare. “If anything, _I _am the finder and keeper of that crown.”

“Friends don’t fight,” Arrrgh says firmly, appearing next to them all in that spooky he way he sometimes manages. Someone that big shouldn’t move so quietly, seriously. Arrrgh picks them both up by the scruff like kittens, placing them gently apart. He gives Toby a stern look. “Wingman, share crown.”

“…He’s not my friend.”

Arrrgh hums. “Sharing anyway.”

It’s so weird when Arrrgh goes all adult on him, but the rare instances always effective. “Ugh, okay, I’ll share.” Toby sees Steve stick his tongue out at him, so he sticks his out right back as he reaches up to take off the crown.

“Well?” Steve says, making grabby gestures. “Jeez, Dumbzalski, I’ll give it back right after if you want it that bad.”

“Uhhh, no thanks, actually?” Toby says, trying not to panic. “If you can get it off, you can keep it.”

“If?” Krel questions.

“Yeah, ‘if’. It’s, uh. Stuck.” Toby ignores Steve’s burst of laughter as he admits his predicament. He focuses on tugging harder at the band of metal on his head- god, fuck, his weight has been difficult to regulate the last while, stress making it twice the work as usual, but that shouldn’t affect his _skull size._

Arrrgh is laughing in deep guffaws, but does reach over to help him. His thick fingers are careful not to hurt Toby, giving the crown one harsh tug.

It doesn’t budge. Arrrgh frowns, growling a little, trying again. It stays right where it is, this time lifting Toby right off the ground with the tugging and making him yelp in pain. Arrrgh quickly drops him, apologizing in a rush. Steve is just about bent in half by now, and even Krel is starting to really laugh.

Toby flushes and scowls at them both. “Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” he snaps, scratching as his cheek and neck, itchy with embarrassment. His whole body is starting to prickle, shit, what if he’s allergic to the metal? “Can we just go get me some vegetable oil or butter or something? I think this thing’s giving me a reaction.”

“You- oh, jeez, I think it really is,” Steve says, suddenly sobering up. He looks worried now, coming closer and staring at Toby. “Wow, okay, are those hives? Shit, dude- d’you have an EpiPen or, or _something,_ I don’t have Eli’s with me-”

“_Hives?”_ Toby exclaims. He spins and rushes back to the sword he’d used as a mirror, searching his skin for the red rash no doubt emerging. What he catches sight of stops him cold, however.

“Not hives,” Arrrgh says lowly, sniffing the air. “Fire, _bad fire.”_

Toby’s hand shakes as he pokes at the shimmer spreading across his cheek. He jabs himself as he does and he yanks the hand away, staring at it in horror as he sees the shimmer spreading down his arms, nails lengthening as it does.

“Those look like scales,” Krel remarks, not nearly as concerned as everyone else. “Human bodies and their illnesses are very strange.”

“This- this isn’t a human thing, dude,” Toby strangles out, trembling harder as the itch across his body becomes a burn, then a _blaze_-

He hears his own voice screaming, reverberating against the high walls of the vault, growing deeper and louder the longer it goes on. Toby doubles over in agony as his body explodes into the pure sensation of being burned alive.

He loses track of- of everything, of himself, of where he puts his hands out to catch himself, digging into the stone and trying to stop himself from retching up his lunch. His mind goes blank in the white-hot pain. Every sensation is horrible, horrible, horrible- his back knocks against something hard and he hears a bellowing scream, ears flattening against his head as vertigo assaults him and sends him buckling all over again.

He’s burning- he’s crumbling to ash- Toby shudders and sick comes out of his gasping jaws, splattering on the stone and hissing with steam. Oh god, he’s boiling from the inside out, he’s dying, he’s _dying-_ a part of him smacks against the walls, lashing, other parts knocking together, unable to reorient where they should be placed.

Toby gives in and falls into a heap, twitching and crying as he’s consumed by the bonfire inside him.

-/-

“Did he… die?”

“…Poke him with your bat.”

Something dull prods Toby’s nose. He scrunches his eyes shut tight and waves blindly at whatever’s touching him. The following shrieks jolt him out of the nap he didn’t remember taking.

Toby sits up sharply, rising up and up and- Krel and Steve and Arrrgh are a short distance away, down on the ground. Toby blinks, confused; he’s not holding his hammer, why is he so high up?

“Toby? Toby, hey, dude!” Steve is shouting, sounding nervous. “Are you, uh, you in there, buddy? We’re friends, right? You don’t feel like chowing down on your old pal Palchuk.”

“What? What the fuck, why would I-” Toby’s mouth snaps shut, his voice dying as he feels it come out _wrong,_ louder and bigger and just- his but not his. Toby looks at the ceiling, which is still pretty far up, but way closer than it should be. He doesn’t want to look down. If he doesn’t look down he doesn’t have to acknowledge whatever’s happened.

“Wingman?” Arrrgh calls, worried, tugging on every heartstring at once with his tone. Toby closes his eyes and counts to three, opening them and looking down.

Well. Shit. Those are definitely long, gold scaled legs, and they are almost definitely his. Toby twitches his pinky finger- the pinky toe of the clawed hands does so, too. Toby’s brain goes bluescreen as he stares.

Something hits the wall. He twists his neck- oh Jesus it’s so _long_ now- and peers over his shoulder to see a lashing tail, hitting the wall of the vault again and again. Toby tries to stop it- it twitches violently and ends up smacking down into the weapons Krel had been examining.

Krel cups his mouth with four hands and shouts up, “Okay, let’s just stay calm and- oh, KLEB!” He and Steve are both scooped up by Arrrgh and rushed to a safe distance as Toby wails and spins in a circle.

“What the _FUCK?!”_ he yells, crashing into more stuff as he tries to- to look at his tail, his legs, his whole _body._ “I’m- the crown- I- _aaaaAAAAAA-”_

“Calm down! You’ll bring this place down on all of us!” Krel orders from below, while Steve screams loudly.

Toby keeps screaming, fear and confusion swirling in his head, until he feels his throat grow hot and a gout of flame blooms out of his mouth. It toasts a whole wall to pure black before he gets his mouth shut and stops it. Toby stands in front of it, panting ragged puffs of smoke, wobbling on his four legs as he tries and fails to process what’s happening.

Two extra appendages snap out from his back. He twists his head around to see a pair of wings half-mantled, shaking as much as his stiffened tail is.

“Oh, oh god,” Toby says, caught between sheer terror and hysterical excitement. “I think I’m a dragon.”

“We know!” Steve yells from the other side of the vault. “Now stop tryin’a stomp us flat, asshole!”

Toby sits down heavily, limbs folding awkwardly as he goes boneless with shock. His thoughts are spinning too fast to really form, heart racing in his suddenly much bigger rib cage. Jesus Christ, it’s only been a few weeks since Morando happened. Can’t he get a fucking break?

“…Call Jim phone,” Arrrgh tells the alien and human clinging to his back. Toby can’t quite stop the high-pitched whine that escapes his clenched fangs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You remember my mom is the mayor, right? Because that’s a crime, you literally just told the mayor’s daughter you committed privacy invasion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wassup it took way to long to drabble this out but here we are finally

Toby has run into multiple things a very small span of time and it’s getting really tiring. The wall, another rock-shelf of stupid troll-things, the pile of boulders leftover from their big fight with General Morando- trying to maneuver even in this size of a room is _hard_ with wings, tail, and four legs. Plus, his neck and new height. Toby keeps getting vertigo every time he looks down and it’s _terrible._

He’s ended up scrunching down on himself, trying to not knock into anything more, while Steve and Krel try calling Jim and Claire, and most importantly, Blinky. Toby is doing his best to not overthink what’s just happened to him; once they get hold of the others, this’ll be resolved in no time.

That’s what he’s telling himself, anyway. If he doesn’t, he’ll probably freak out and breathe fire again, which, in an enclosed underground space like this? Yeah, not a great idea.

“How is the line busy?” Steve mutters tetchily, squinting at his phone. “You dweebs only talk to each other, who the hell is calling him right now?”

“We have other friends!” Toby protests on behalf of his bestie.

Steve glances at him dubiously. “Oh yeah? Like who.”

“Well, Claire has Darci and Mary-”

“Don’t count, we’re talkin’ about you and Lake.”

“Oh, uh, there’s. Um, there’s you, and Krel and Aja- wait Aja is out of cell service, and Eli, too…” Toby sees Steve giving him a smug look. He pulls back his lips to bare the rows of gleaming fangs he’s grown. “Okay, admittedly speaking, we don’t have a lot of friends. Happy? He’s probably talking with his mom or something.”

Steve laughs at him, until Toby growls a little and suddenly his phone is much more interesting. Krel, in charge of calling Claire, has studiously ignored the both of them through the entire exchange. Without Aja around to cajole him into things, or a mutual project to work on, or a DJ Kleb show to preform, Toby is starting to get the sense that Krel is kind of an introverted, relatively serious individual. It’s kind of a shame the Akiridian and Jim never got to spend time together; they’re similar enough they’d probably get along well… or annoy the hell out of each other.

Toby’s wandering thoughts are interrupted by the painful sensation of someone trying to tear his scalp off. “OW- no, no, Arrrgh, Arrrgh it’s not working ow ow ow _stop ow!”_ Toby’s horns are released and the weight straddling his shoulders shifts to drop onto the ground. Despite the throb coming from his skull, Toby manages a strained (and probably weird looking) smile for Arrrgh. “Sorry, wingman. I don’t think brute force is gonna fix this one.”

Arrrgh rumbles worriedly, ears flattened back. As he reaches upwards, beckoning, Toby obliges and lowers his head to be at eye level. Arrrgh’s hands are even more gentle than when Toby was human; scarcely touching as the troll checks him over for the umpteenth time.

“Hurting?” Arrrgh asks, fingers brushing the softer scales under Toby’s left eye.

“Not anymore, I promise,” Toby reassures. His big friend hadn’t really hurt him; the throb is already subsiding. Plus, the process of _becoming_ a dragon had been excruciating, but now he felt basically okay. All things considering, Toby thinks he’s handling this well enough.

Arrrgh says something low and gravelly, speaking Trollish as he puts his horns to Toby’s. Toby… isn’t familiar with this particular troll habit? But hey, if it makes Arrrgh feel a little less scared for him, then Toby will take the gentle headbutts.

“I got her!” Krel abruptly shouts, which makes Arrrgh flinch and growl softly. Toby risks testing out his new strength and gently pats Arrrgh’s back with one huge paw. Situations where Arrrgh can’t actively fix the problem make him anxious; it’s easier with Blinky around, but just Toby supporting him is okay in a pinch.

“_How did you get this number?”_ Claire’s voice accuses Krel. Toby feels the elongated ears he’s sprouted flip up, along with an involuntary excited lash of his tail.

“I remotely accessed Mary’s phone and copied it from there,” Krel says, like it’s no big deal. He’s got facetime up and running, and Toby’s chest feels kind of tight, seeing Claire’s annoyed expression.

“_Wow what the fuck,”_ Claire retorts indignantly. “_You remember my mom is the mayor, right? Because that’s a crime, you literally just told the mayor’s daughter you committed privacy invasion.”_

_“Who committed privacy invasion?”_ comes Jim’s voice somewhere nearby. He appears in the very edge of the frame. “_Is it Eli again- oh, hi Krel.”_

“Hello, troll hunter.”

“_I can just hear the space in that, and… huh, you’re sure blue today.”_

“I could say the same to you.”

“Both of you shut up already,” Steve interjects, shoving his way in close to Krel and grabbing at his (definitely alien) phone, “we got an emergency, we don’t have time for this stuff!”

Toby realizes he’s not visible to the camera from this angle, given neither Claire nor Jim have reacted to the twenty-foot tall dragon in the room. He then wonders if he’ll even fit on camera, and misses his chance to make himself known before Steve is exclaiming, “-and obviously I told him it was a bad idea, like, _don’t do it Dumbzalski,_ and he was like, _you’re not the boss of me._ It’s his own fault really and I _totally_ did my best to prevent it-”

“_Steve!”_ Jim bellows, nearly busting the phone’s speakers. Steve and Krel both flinch away from Jim’s tone and volume, but Toby just sighs. Jim is really easygoing… until someone even insinuates about his friends being hurt.

“_What. Happened. To Toby?”_ Jim says, in that special furious way when he’s getting worked up. Toby can’t help the inappropriate rush of happiness, hearing his friend be so protective of him.

“He, uh, well, he basically.” Steve flails a little and then turns the phone towards Toby. “He, uh. Dragon?”

Claire and Jim’s faces stare at Toby from on the tiny screen, and Toby can see an even tinier feed in the corner of himself. Bright gold-orange scales, brilliant green eyes, horns arcing from his skull in crownlike points.

“Hi, guys?” Toby tries sheepishly, watching their expressions go into full on gaping shock. “So it’s like Steve said, I guess? I’m… a dragon.”

A shocked pause, and then, “_…Jesus Christ,”_ Jim swears, as Claire lets out a burst of giggles.

“Don’t _laugh_,” Toby whines at her.

“_We’ve only been gone a few weeks, h- _how?” Claire laughs. Jim says something similarly, growled instead, and stomps out of the frame.

“Ask Blinky- it’s their stupid magic crown!”

Claire laughs again, an edge of disbelief to it. “_Toby- Toby, I’ve been possessed by a bone staff, Jim got himself forcibly drafted into being a bounty hunter-policeman for life- I’m pretty sure we all know by now picking up random troll shit is a bad idea! Let alone putting it _on our heads.”

“Shut _uuuuup,”_ Toby says, snaking his head down closer to the phone, ignoring how Steve takes a step backwards. “I’m out of practice, okay? It’s been nothing but crazy alien tech-”

“Akiridion!” Steve corrects.

“-sorry, crazy _Akiridion_ tech, which just tends to blow stuff up, not turn you into a giant lizard.”

“_First trolls! Then the apocalypse!”_ Jim is shouting, somewhere in the background of the call. Toby can only hear it thanks to his new ears. _“Then we had _aliens,_ and another apocalypse, and now you’re a DRAGON!”_ Something breaking is heard after that.

Toby, mildly concerned, asks, “What’s he doing?”

“_Kicking stalagmites,” _Claire answers, as another loud crack of stone occurs. She doesn’t seem at all worried about Jim taking his frustrations out like he is. “_Or are they stalactites?_ _I always forget the difference. Anyway, we’ve been under some stress lately.”_ More rocks being shattered from nearby.

“I can tell,” Toby says dryly. As he shifts, trying to get more comfortable, he feels his back leg and tail run into something. He growls, refocusing. “So yeah, I’m a dragon and I’d like to not be. Can you guys get Blinky on the line, please?”

“_I’ll get him,”_ Jim volunteers, briefly coming back into view. He’s got a stern glare aimed at Toby. _“Don’t move.”_

“Duh, there’s not enough room to.” For his sass, his undoubtedly worried friend glares harder and then disappears. Claire glances after the direction Jim’s gone, and then looks back to the camera with an amused smile.

“Don’t smirk at me,” Toby sulks. Claire keeps smirking, eyes dancing with laughter at his predicament. Ugh, why are they friends again? (Never mind that the teasing is a welcome normalcy in this extraordinary situation.)

Their group make small talk best they can while Jim fetches Blinky. They unsurprisingly have very little in common altogether, excluding having watched the recent Gun Robot OVA series online. Though that gets them going for a bit, it’s thankfully not long before help arrives.

“_Miss Claire?”_ Blinky’s still distant voice asks. When Claire calls him over, he at first doesn’t notice the phone in her hands. “_Master Jim said it was urgent, are you well?”_

_“I’m fine, _Toby_ isn’t,”_ Claire replies, and turns the screen towards his face.

Blinky, comically, blinks in confusion at the screen. “_Is this another of your video games, Claire? Or that- what was it- you tube?”_

“_I can hear the space,”_ Claire remarks, the same time as Toby clears his throat and says, “Uh, no, not a Youtube video. Hi, Blinky. Kinda got myself into… _this.”_

“_Tobias, hello!”_ Blinky exclaims in good cheer. “_Are you face-apped currently? Claire has been showing me many of hers lately.”_

Toby coughs, laughing as Jim off-screen says, “_No, it’s not an app, Blinky. He put some crown on and… that happened.”_

It’s funny, but sort of scary, to see six eyes bug-out in shock all at once.

-/-

“That’s seriously all we gotta do?” Steve asks, when Blinky is done explaining things.

_“It was designed that way, so yes,”_ Blinky confirms. He, Jim, and Claire are all squished together to be on camera. “_Once an enemy had been defeated, that typically meant the object that the user most wanted had been achieved.”_

“Shouldn’t be too difficult, then, should it?” Krel says, glancing up at Toby. “What is it that you most want right now?”

Toby, who has steadily gotten more claustrophobic as the conversation has gone on, tries to not squirm in their tight quarters. “To be somewhere I actually _fit,_ right now.”

“Problem solved, then,” Krel says. “We get outside, Toby changes back.”

“_And then you put the crown back in the vault,”_ Jim presses sternly.

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“_It’s definitely too dangerous to mess around with, I’m not kidding here.”_

“Chill out, Lake,” Steve says, baseball bat slung across his shoulders. “We’ve dealt with _way_ worse than this.”

“_Not the point, Palchuk.”_

“_Okay, timeout,”_ Claire interrupts, shushing the boys. “_Blinky, you said _typically_ the transformation is reversed easily. What’re the outliers to that?”_

Of course, Claire would ask about a detail they’d overlooked. Toby appreciates her thoroughness, but it’s also putting a rock of anxiety in his stomach. If he’s learned anything, hanging out with Trollhunters and alien runaways, it’s that if something could possibly go wrong…

“_Ah… Well, in some rare cases,”_ Blinky begins, “_the Crown of Herensuge has been worn by a troll… lacking a concrete goal.”_

“You mean like me,” Toby says, ears pressing back as he puts together the pieces.

“_But often those mishaps were solved soon afterwards!”_ Blinky says hurriedly. “_I’m sure that even if your first attempt at deactivating its magic fails, you’ll figure it out before the night’s end. I believe in all of your combined intellect and wit!”_

Toby glances between everyone. He catches the others doing similarly, and grimacing along with him. “Uh, sure, Blinky. Thank you for the encouragement.”

Claire has put a hand over her eyes, shaking her head. Jim looks possibly even more worried than he’d been earlier. From the way Arrrgh is humming somewhat nervously, all the members of their original team as seem to share the same doubt. A little offensive, but also understandable.

Well… there’s only one way to find out if they can pull this off or not.

Toby shifts his wings as he stands again, slowly and carefully sorting out his four legs. “Okay, let’s give it a go,” he says with more confidence than he feels. “Thanks again for the info, Blinky. Dunno what we would’ve done without you.”

_“I’m sure you would have figured something out,”_ Blinky says warmly.

Maybe, but not without a ton of trial and error before that. But Toby doesn’t say that to Blinky, not when he’s doing his proud mentor expression.

They say goodbye to the three Jersey Trollhunters, and Toby has to swallow the lump in his throat as Jim and Claire end the call. Them being so far away feels something like homesickness, despite Toby having stayed right where he is. (And that’s the main problem, isn’t it?)

“So… how’re you getting out the door?” Steve asks a beat after the call ends. They all look to the too-small entrance and then back to Toby.

Toby’s wings droop as he sighs.

-/-

Here’s to hoping no one gets mad at them for letting Krel blast the hell out of the doorframe. Or having Arrrgh even out one side with a few good punches. Steve doesn’t really get to do much, but he does hit a few chunks of rock with his bat, so that possibly counts as property damage?

At least the market is abandoned, now. Still creepily empty, but still. It’s better than Toby having to maneuver around dozens of its former residents without squashing someone underfoot.

As it stands, he still might yet manage that.

“Flap harder!” Steve orders from below. Toby _tries,_ but his shoulders hurt and he’s just not getting any _lift._

Even ‘jumping off something high’ has resulted in him just falling on his face. And nearly crushing his friends. Why is he even listening to Steve on this? All it’s doing is wrecking the ruins of Trollmarket even worse, and stirring up dust while he’s at it (and some of the dust is _corpse dust,_ oh god oh god).

Oh yeah. It’s because their first idea for simply giving him room to stretch out failed. Toby is still a dragon, so it’s time for a plan B.

That plan being him attempting to do something that proper flyers have their whole lives to practice, and he’s had about ten minutes of literal crash course.

“No, move like _this,”_ Krel instructs, hovering nearby on his board. He’s got a holograph projected into the air, showing a step by step of how bats and birds fly. Except it’s partially in Akiridian, and mostly mathematical equation.

“_That_ doesn’t make any sense to me!” Toby growls. He flairs his unreasonably huge wingspan, sending another wave of dust across the ground (right over Steve and Arrrgh, who cough). “You see these things? These are _mental,_ they don’t listen! They’re not even really mine!”

“Do you want to fly or not?” demands the glowing alien, very close to his face suddenly.

Toby’s neck does a weird thing that reminds him of a recoiling snake, and he glares balefully up at Krel. He scrunches down, having had _enough,_ and does his best impression of a giant golden lump. He tucks his head under his wings, mantling them around himself. Tries to block everything out. Count to ten and then back down, think of Jim and Claire, their distrust of his current company’s competence. Think of Claire and Jim just because.

Ugh, today is just making him miss them way more than usual. It’s not that Steve and Krel are _that_ untrustworthy to help him, it’s just that… the three of them are used to dealing with this weird stuff together, just them and their troll friends. It makes Toby even more stressed to be fumbling through this with two people he’s only recently become friends with, versus the two people he finds himself glancing around for, when he forgets himself.

Toby can hear voices outside his wing-shelter. He ignores them, curling tighter on himself. He’s uncomfortable, lonely, and maybe a little scared. There’s a slim chance that if he closes his eyes tight enough, for long enough, he might wake up from this stupid dream.

A familiar touch lands on the thin membrane of his wing, accompanied by a gentle, “Wingman… Hiding won’t fix it.” Arrrgh runs his hand across the wing, firmly reassuring that he’s _here,_ watching out for him.

“I hate this,” Toby confides quietly. He hates doing this without his friends, he hates that he made such a stupid mistake. He especially hates how many scuffs and scrapes he’s given himself.

Arrrgh rumbles, patting his scales. “Have to face it,” he says wisely, and Toby knows he’s right. “But… not alone.”

Toby shifts, peeking out from under his wing. Arrrgh is sat next to him, smiling patiently. A respectful distance away, Krel and Steve are awkwardly hovering, sending him apologetic glances. As Toby unfurls himself, they approach.

“Sorry,” Krel says first, his four hands twiddling nervously with a gadget. “I haven’t spent time with many people besides my sister. I forget not everyone is… us, in how we approach problems.” He then elbows Steve.

“_Ow-_ okay, jeez.” Steve huffs, but says, “Sorry for yelling at you the same time as Krel was, Domzalski. You okay?”

Toby figures the slightly backhanded insult and begrudging apology is as good as he’s going to get. God, no one in his friend group has actual social skills. Except Claire, but she doesn’t count right now.

“I’m… not fine, but I’ll live.” Toby sighs, mulling over how his breath feels hot on his tongue. He huffs and gets a puff of smoke, feels a crackle in the back of his throat. The second time around it’s easier to control. “Huh. Cool.”

“Aim the other way!” Krel yelps, already having erected a shield in front of him and Steve.

“I’m not gonna _actually_ breathe fire,” Toby says, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, I think I’m ready to try again. Sorry for the, uh. Ostriching.”

“The what?” Krel and Steve ask together, and then give each other affronted looks.

“Never mind,” Toby chuckles. He glances down at Arrrgh, who is still giving him a patiently encouraging look. Toby steels his courage, reminding himself that even if it feels off, he _can_ handle this without Jim and Claire.

About fifteen minutes later, he manages to stay in the air for a whole thirty-seconds before he steers himself into a wall. It doesn’t turn him back into a human, but it’s kind of seriously _awesome._

Grabbing Steve in his claws the next pass around only bolsters the giddy joy in him. Their screams- of fear, of exhilaration- fill up the cavern ghost town, for a moment banishing its grim silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i refuse for this to get beyond a short and silly (and slightly angsty) fic. i have a dozen other things i need to work on, i _cannot_ afford to get overly invested in what started as a crackfic.

**Author's Note:**

> i missed my trio so much


End file.
